Conventional optical transceivers, transponders, and modems (collectively referred to herein as “transceivers”) for coherent optical transmission have a vast amount of digital functionality that is implemented in hard-coded, pre-programmed Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). The digital functionality can include, without limitation, modulation formats, dispersion compensation, Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD) compensation, non-linear pre and/or post-compensation, Forward Error Correction (FEC), performance monitoring, and the like. An example of an optical transceiver with the digital functionality is Ciena Corporation's WaveLogic which supports a fully instrumented, intelligent photonic system with coherent optics and flexible line elements that combine with embedded and discrete software tools to offer superior automation, control, and visibility of optical networks. The associated ASICs are built to efficiently address any metro, regional, long-haul, or submarine application. Due to the large Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) cost, generally low volumes (for networking applications relative to other applications with higher volumes such as consumer devices, etc.), and short product lifecycle, convention approaches have ASIC-based devices hard-coded, pre-programmed to support multiple modes, such as for any metro, regional, long-haul, or submarine application. As described herein, a mode is some digital functionality implemented in the optical transceiver. Thus, any transceiver used in one application would have all the functionality for the other applications, albeit disabled. Having multiple modes included therein takes up gates, power, and real estate on a Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) die. This contributes to a large size and extremely expensive masks. Additionally, hard-coded, pre-programmed implementations may be difficult to adapt to flexible, dynamic Software Defined Networking (SDN) networks. Further, hard-coded, pre-programmed implementations preclude future compatibility with the industry's definitions of interoperable and open transceiver interfaces.
Thus, it would be advantageous to support software programmable flexible and dynamic optical transceivers based on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) to overcome the aforementioned limitations in the hard-coded, pre-programmed implementations.